The Russellville School District is hosting the Arkansas Governor's Quiz Bowl Association (AGQBA) Invitational tournament on Saturday.

The AGQBA Invitational is the largest Quiz Bowl tournament in the state and will bring more than 80 teams from northwest, southwest and central Arkansas to Russellville High School (RHS).

This will be the first year the annual event will be conducted at RHS. The previous two have been at Maumelle High School. RHS Quiz Bowl Coach Brandon Cooper said having a centralized location and enough space were factors in choosing the host school.

"It is an honor to host this tournament, and a credit to the Russellville School District for providing excellent facilities," Cooper said.

He said hosting the tournament will be good for the city because some teams may stay in local hotels the night before and most teams will eat at local restaurants for lunch Saturday.

Teams will compete in one of four divisions: middle school, junior high, high school 1A-4A and high school 5A-7A. Team play will begin at 10 a.m. to determine seeds. In the afternoon, teams will compete in single-elimination "knock-out" rounds.

The tournament will be followed by a trophy presentation ceremony, tentatively scheduled for 6 p.m. First- through fourth-place trophies will be awarded to the winning teams in each division.

"There will definitely not be any kind of home field advantage because of the quality of teams that will be playing in the tournament," Cooper said. "There will be several elite-level, state championship caliber teams at the tournament. By serving as the host site, it falls on our team not only to try and prepare to play in the tournament, but to spend a few extra hours getting everything set up with signage and arranging classrooms to play games among other things."